life, in snippets

The bathroom is just about done. I still need to touch the edges of the bath up (ie, remove the rest of the paint) – I was careful about paint stripper around the edges, not wanting to damage floor / skirting boards / wallpaper etc.

Of course, now I want to rip all the wallpaper off and paint the bathroom walls instead. It’s crappy wallpaper, it’s already lifting in places, and I like painting.

I have yet to convince Tobermory that my desire is feasible.

In the meantime, I have been doing other things. Various wedding-related things (I am attempting not to be boring about wedding planning, or a bridezilla, so I’ll spare the details); most recently making the remainder of my wedding dress.

I bought a dress off TradeMe for $38.50, including P&P. It was a size 22-24 (ie, much too big for me) and the skirt was ridiculously gathered up. There’s enough material in this thing that I’ve cut it down the side seams, turned the rear half of the dress into an overskirt with a train (for the ceremony) and have enough fabric from the dress-front to be able to make an overskirt (no train) for the reception.

This means that my wedding outfit has cost $400 for a custom-made corset (admittedly quite costly, but I will definitely wear it again, because, you know, corset) and a further $100 for underskirt, overskirt x2, and a wrap so that I can keep my shoulders and that awkward little bit of armpit chub under wraps.

Crafty!

I have a 25-year-old Bernina sewing machine. It used to be my mother’s, and when I left home she sent it with me on the grounds that I actually sew on occasion, and Mum never does.

Ever since we moved into the house in ’08, we’ve noted that at certain hours of the evening (in the last hour or two before sundown), the light coming in the kitchen window makes it very difficult to sit on one side of the kitchen table. You have to carefully align yourself with someone-on-the-other-side’s head and hope they don’t move (much), eat with your eyes shut, etc.

We periodically mutter “We should do something about that!” and this week, I finally did.

Ideally, eventually, I want blinds in the kitchen. But I haaate venetian blinds with a pure and bloody passion, curtains are impractical in a kitchen (too dirty), Tobermory doesn’t like the Holland blinds I grew up with, and this leaves us with roller or Roman blinds; of which pre-mades don’t work, because our kitchen / dining windows are decidedly non-standard sizes, and custom-mades are ridiculously expensive. I can technically make Roman blinds, but I am not confident enough of my abilities to attempt it in a high-traffic area like the kitchen.

So, on Saturday, I went to Spotlight, bought a curtain track and found some curtain fabric on clearance. As a bonus, after I cut the curtains to an appropriate size, there was sufficient remaining fabric for me to make a Roman blind to put in the smallest bedroom.

When we moved in, the previous owners left us curtains. Some of them were OK, some of them were, in my opinion, ugly. This bedroom fell into the “ugly” spectrum; the wallpaper in there is dark blue / bluey-silver stripes; the curtains they left were beige/coffee coloured patterns. It kind of worked, I guess, but mostly didn’t. The fabric I bought for the kitchen was grey* (the kitchen is blue/grey-silver/black), so the blind is MUCH better for the little room. It’s also a lot darker (two layers of thermal backed fabric will do that for you), and as this room tends to be used as the “oh god I have a headache where is the dark” location, this is a Good Thing.

It is also a colour that will look excellent when the room is eventually re-painted; I have vague plans to paint that room a lemony-yellow, and yellow/grey/white is a colour scheme I rather like. I suspect I will have to re-thread the curtain before long, I am not confident that the cording I put on will last; but it’s good enough for a first attempt.

It felt like it was almost fated to work out, in a way. I had the idea, the fabric was left over and exactly the right amount for a blind. I found dowelling at Spotlight (for the pockets in the blind) that were EXACTLY the right width for the window on special, and when I took down the curtain track, it turned out I could re-use the curtain track screwholes for the blind.

I have done no laundry or bathroom cleaning, but I deem this weekend a Success!

* To be perfectly honest, the fabric quite strongly resembles a shower curtain; it’s grey with a silverish wavy stripey thing down the fabric periodically. In fact I am sure I’ve owned a shower curtain like this before. But it was $15 for 2.9m by 2.something of the stuff, with the stuff you hook curtain hooks into already sewn on, and thus a Bargain and I do not turn away bargains when I am making temporary solutions.